Path: csiph.com!feeder.erje.net!1.eu.feeder.erje.net!news.roellig-ltd.de!open-news-network.org!peer02.am4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!peer01.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!post01.iad!fx44.iad.POSTED!not-for-mail Subject: Re: Abandonware should fall back into the public domain Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer References: <15f54b7a-e9e8-4681-bc0c-b4ea47077d92@googlegroups.com> From: Richard Damon User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.13; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <15f54b7a-e9e8-4681-bc0c-b4ea47077d92@googlegroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 25 Message-ID: <_R3UB.8357$g86.787@fx44.iad> X-Complaints-To: abuse@easynews.com Organization: Forte - www.forteinc.com X-Complaints-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly. Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2017 22:18:17 -0500 X-Received-Body-CRC: 1125028127 X-Received-Bytes: 2445 Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:37707 On 11/30/17 9:27 AM, Rick C. Hodgin wrote: > As the years go by and more and more previously commercial (and even > open source) software makes the move into abandonware, where the original > copyright and/or patent holder is no longer maintaining or developing the > software ... my view is it should move into the area of the public domain, > legally protected for any use at that point, with all restrictions on use > rights completely removed, allowing binary deconstruction, reverse > engineering, machine code extraction, essentially use for any purpose. > > It makes no sense that abandonware should not receive a legal standing, > such that any person or company who approaches it for use is actually > protected under the law. They should have that protection. The use of > that pre-existing tool should be at their disposal when the entity who > originally held rights to it walks away. > One problem is that the author of the program may not have the right to give you those abilities. Say for instance you buy program X from company Y, under licensing rules Z (including perhaps an exchange of money). What you might not know is that company Y in producing program X, included software package A from company B, under rules C, which are reflected in some of the rules Z. The fact that company Y has abandoned X, in no way relieves them from rules C, which they passed on to you.